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Talk:Charles XI of France
Adding convenient index box here.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 11:02, February 2, 2020 (UTC) Maurras or not Hi there. Frankly, as a french man, I must say that Charles XI and Charles Maurras just can't be the same person. The way french monarchy and french monarchism did and do work just don't comply with that assumption. I haven't finished Settling accounts tetralogy yet, but it is never implied that they are the same people. Never would have Maurras self-titled himself as King, and never would have been accepted as such among monarchists. I guess Harry did not search much about french monarchy when he decided the fate of France. Whatever... Here are my hypothesis: - Charles XI could be Alfonso Carlos de Bourbon, Duke of San Jaime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_Carlos_of_Bourbon,_Duke_of_San_Jaime) which was the legitimist claimant (under the Charles XI name) right at the time of the AF coming to power in the books. Legitimists were closer to AF's beliefs, but the AF did support Orleanist claimants. - So, what about Jean d'Orléans, Duc de Guise, Orleanist claimant in the thirties? Well... Just like Alfonso, he died to early to suit the books. And he's got the wrong christian name. I've never heard of any of our Kings that changed his name into a "reign name" upon throne accession. Another hypothesis: - AF could have seek another claimants, either in a cadet Bourbon branch, such as Bourbon Parma, in order not to piss off Orleanist or Legitimists by choosing one or another branch. - Charles XI could be a cadet/nephew, whatever, of the two main claimants, but who got himself involved into AF and such rewarded after AF's political victory by the call to the throne by french assemblies. Sadly, I haven't many clues about any cadets beside the claimants. Thoughts? Palpat 20:15, 26 December 2008 (UTC) :We know this King ruled in his own right: He wasn't an absolute monarch, but he was definitely the dominant force in French government. We on this wiki found it difficult to imagine that anyone would go to the trouble of creating, organizing, and leading a brownshirted party and seizing power whether electorally or revolutionally, and then be content to let someone else control the government. Also, both the "European Featherstons" whose historical identities we know underwent radical personality and/or political changes in Turtledove's version: Churchill, who was willing to make common cause with Mosley and become semi-fascistic himself, and Mikhail, who became a tyrant as despotic as any known to modern OTL Russian history, Romanov or Soviet. When in fact the historical Mikhail was on record as being mild as milk, sympathetic to reforms, and very open to criticism. :Using the latter precedent we assumed that the AF leader would go from a Monarchist in the sense of supporting one of the long-vanished dynasties to one who liked the idea of a monarchy in France but wanted to pull the levers of power himself, and simply seized the crown and declared himself king, with the requisite secret police and goon squads to shout down anyone claiming he lacked legitimacy. My initial thought was that de Gaulle was the Charles who had done this, but digging into AF's history convinced me, and the rest of us, otherwise. :So Mauras is an educated guess. The Duke of San Jaime may also work, if you believe he would have been interested in starting a party to seize power in Nazi/Freedom Party style. :Then of course there's always the very excellent chance that Turtledove did a Google search on "Head of the Action Francaise" and assumed that whoever said head was wanted to crown himself, without doing any deeper research. Wouldn't be the first time. Turtle Fan 00:48, 27 December 2008 (UTC) Good points indeed. The fact is indeed that Charles XI does not seem to be a figurehead in Harry's book (just like Vittorio Emmanuel III in Mussolini's Italy) but quite active. That, plus the fact that both main claimants are too old (both died in the late 30's) and misnamed is not in favor of those two men. Even more for the legitimist claimant who in our timeline did not seem very interested in France, he therefore could not have been very much involved into AF, even in TL-191. You are also right, according to french context, claiming that Charles XI is not an absolute monarch. That's also my point of view. The way I see things, AF must have seized power either in the late 20's, using some March on Paris the way Mussolini did or early 30's, using the aftermath of the economic crisis. Then, both french Houses (Senate and Houses of Deputy) would just have had to change a line in the Third Republic constitution to have a King as an Head of State. (Third Republic was indeed supposed to be a monarchy and was therefore builded as a constitutionnal one, but there were no agreement on who shall be King -orleanist or legitimist-, then, things that were temporary became permanent). So, our Charles XI would have reigned in a Third Republic framework, but a more authoritarian one indeed, given the AF fact and such, mirroring Fascist Italy... I think I'm too "OTL" minded ;) and just can't imagine any other claimant beside our two main candidates. I lack the sources and such to find about my other idea, that is a cadet of those two men or a man in a cadet Bourbon branch, but regarding french monarchy's fundamental laws, it's more believable to have a royal involved into AF becoming head of state. Pure speculation, by the way. And you have a very good point with the personnality shift in TL-191. De Gaulle couldn't be that King indeed, he was a nobody in the 20's-30's and became famous and involved in Politics only because of WW2 and Free France. Given what he really wrote in the 30's, he could play France's Irving Morrell/ Guderian in TL-191 by the way. So, I do agree: Maurras, given the obscurity of those cadet branches, given the fact that the King should be the head of AF and given the lack of information about him in Harry's books, is quite a good speculative choice, even if it stay strange for a french man. ;) I'll try to find somebody else in our royals, as the two main claimants just can't comply. Palpat 11:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC) :We probably should reconsider this article in light of our new policy on speculation. We have neither evidence nor Evidence that it was Maurras. TR 15:45, 27 December 2008 (UTC) :We don't have hard, positive evidence, but we do have circumstancial evidence as described above. He's far from the only OTL figure given an article based on part of a name and an educated guess based on OTL biography. Turtle Fan 17:12, 27 December 2008 (UTC) I always thought that it was relatively strange, though you can consider that Charles had no great love for either of the main monarchial candidates, it was more the monarchist system that he supported. I always imagine it as a Hitlerian move. Charlie becomes PM and then the President dies (naturally or unnaturally) or is forced to resign. He merges the two positions and names himself King. Two problems with this; in the Victiorious Opposition, Anne Colleton states that Action Francaise has no clear leader like Featherston. Secondly, Charlie could easily run France from behind the scenes with a puppet King giving him legitimacy. But you never know with dictators. He may just have coveted the power and the title. I wonder if Harry would have been better going with Laval as the leader of a Republican fascist France, but then again that's just a cliche. I think it's a fair guess to have Maurras. :::I see that this debate ended a long time ago - but I would like to reopen it. I think that the "consensus" about Maurras being the King is plain wrong. You have to understand the nature of Monarchism in general and French Monarchism in particular. Monarchism does not consist simply of taking a leader, placing a crown on his head and starting to address him as "Your Majesty". Monarchism means that you are attached to a particular dynasty and feel that these particular people are By Grace of God the legitimate rulers of yout country due to a long historical tradition, and that anyone else ruling the sountry is an illegitimate usurper. In France, Monarchism is very specifically connected with the House of Bourbon and with the assertion that the Bourbons are the rightful rulers of France; that is how it was during the French Revolution and that is how it still is (to the extent that it still exists, a very marginal force in today's France). Any French Monarchist worth his salt would reject with disgust a non-Bourbon "King" and regard such a "King" as at least as much of a usurper as the President of a Republic is. So, Maurras would have no interest whatsoever in calling himself a "King", and every reason not to - it would have alienated both Republicans and Moinarchists and pleased nobody. He could have had some leeway in choosing which Bourbon to take, but a Bourbon it would have to be. All the actual precedents point in the same way: Franco did not proclaim himself King of Spain, that had to be a (Spanish) Bourbon; Admiral Horthy did not proclaim himself King of Hungary, he was quite content to be a "Regent" in place of the absent Habsburgs; Mussolini did not make himself King of Italy but got along very well (at least until 1943) with the existing King. I am quite sure that Maurras would have done something similar, and that assuming Maurras to have made himself a King, without an explicit statement to that effect by Turtledove, is exactly the kind of wild speculation which is not supposed to happen in this Wiki. After all, if there was an altenate history story in which an unnamed President of the US in 2000-2008 was a strong supporter of abortions and of gun cotnrol and held a cordial discussion with Bin Laden after 9/11, would anybody say that this Presodent was George W. Bush without an explicit reference in the story itself? I consider the idea of Maurras making himself King as every bit out of character as the above. Adam Keller 16:48, March 16, 2010 (UTC) ::::While I think some of Mr. Keller's analogies aren't precisely on point, I do think our increasing focus on narrow reading of the novels does require us to do away with the Charles XI=Maurras conjecture, and restore this article to "Charles XI of France". TR ::::Agreed that many of the above analogies are stretches. I think that would be an overapplication of narrowness. By my reading, there's as much to support Maurras's kingship as there is Dick Russell's ambassadorship, Reagan's gig with the football team, Will Rogers's and Robert Howard's roles, or even Hitler's, umm, Hitler thing. And the name Charles was provided when HT was still using historical figures as much as possible, though as the book wore on he eventually gave up on that. If HT got monarchism wrong, it's not like that was the only thing he got wrong in the second half of TL-191. Sweet Mother of God, it's not like that at all! Turtle Fan 11:14, March 17, 2010 (UTC) :::::Turtledove might have gotten a lot of things wrong, and when he did and wrote it down then we in this Wiki are stuck with it. This does not mean that when he did not write it you can attribute to him getting something very wrong. By the way, having the King's name as "Charles" does not necessarily mean that that was his name before. In this particular case, I think that it could well have been a regnal name which he took after coming tho the throne, indicating that he wanted to pick up where Charles X left off when he was overthrown in 1830. Charles X had tried to roll back the results of the French Revolution and get as much as possible back to where France was in 1789 (unlike Louis Philippe, whose regime tried to represent a water-down version of the French Revolution). Action Francaise considered the French Revolution as a very bad thing, the point where things started to go wrong in France and the whole world. A King which they brought to the throne might logically feel sympathy with Charles X and seek to continue from the point where he was stopped. I admit this is also conjecture, but to my mind it makes far more sense than to assume that the king was Maurras. Adam Keller 11:02, March 18, 2010 (UTC) Category:Killed By Nuclear Bombs We can easily fill an ATL/Fictional Story category. OTL category, I'd be hard-pressed to think of one. Maybe we should leave that category un-split and un-suffixed in case one OTL Hiroshiman shows up some day. If several show up, we'd have to go back and edit every article in the category (not like we don't do that often enough as is) but I think that's about as likely as a WWII-era story in which all the POV characters are non-smokers. Turtle Fan 03:01, July 17, 2010 (UTC) Alphabet Now that all the Kings are in the same category, we've got a long list of Charleses. Keeping them in ascending numerical order is the goal, and we put Arabic numerals in the Defaultsorts to ensure this. It's worked well in most cases but it seems that alphabetically 11 comes before 3 and 5, which is so stupid. I'm not having much luck coming up with a way to fix it, though. Turtle Fan 01:45, October 28, 2010 (UTC) :Try "03", etc. That worked somewhere else...popes, I think. TR 03:17, October 28, 2010 (UTC) :I'll try tomorrow. It's already much later than I'd hoped to get to bed. I had to write an e-mail to a friend that went on longer than expected, and then rather than close the browser I unconsciously hopped over here. I was actually very surprised when I consciously registered that I'd done so, if you can believe that. Turtle Fan 04:39, October 28, 2010 (UTC) Infante Alfonso Carlos, Duke of San Jaime Reopening this discussion... someone mentioned briefly that Charles XI could have been Alfonso Carlos, Duke of San Jaime. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_Carlos_of_Bourbon,_Duke_of_San_Jaime) Perhaps we should mention this possibility in that section of the article? Alfonso Carlos in real life was the legitimist claimant to France from October 1931 to September 1936, when he was hit by a truck in Vienna. It wouldn't take too many changes to have his predecessor (Jaime, Duke of Madrid) die a year early or to have Alfonso Carlos survive the truck accident. Turtledove could have named him "Charles XI" because the last official king was "Charles X", and the guy we usually think of as Charles XI (Carlos, Duke of Madrid) never actually reigned as king. The main arguments against this are: (1) Alfonso Carlos OR his wife's nephew Prince Xavier would have also been a Carlist claimant to Spain's throne, a fact Turtledove might have mentioned when discussing this Spanish Civil War, and (2) He would have been 95 years old in 1944. -BaronGrackle 16:16, February 2, 2012 (UTC) * According to wikipedia, Louis-Philippe, Orleanist pretender until 1894, had a son named Charles who died in infancy in 1875. He would have become the claimant upon the death of his older brother Philippe in 1926, had he lived. I didn't realize that this conversation had restarted. Sorry about that, BaronGrackle. As for whether or not we should discuss Alfonso Carlos in the article: my position is that it's unnecessary. The primary purpose of the article is to describe what we know about Charles XI from the books. The literary comment is there primarily because this wiki did at one time declare dogmatically that Charles XI was Charles Maurras, based primarily on what the internet community seemed to believe. As we've moved towards a more "professional" approach, obviously being domatic about Charles XI's identity is impossible. But also wanted to acknowledge several of the issues and the fan-base speculation associated with the character. So listing every possible candidate should remain on the talk page, not on the article. (That's my take on it; other admins may not agree.) TR 17:21, April 3, 2012 (UTC) :This admin agrees. With respect to the various theorists, I grow weary of the refusal of this discussion to stay dead, and would hate to see it bleed into the article proper. Turtle Fan 22:48, April 3, 2012 (UTC) I think it Occam's razor obvious that Charles XI is a fictional Bourbon-Orleans, so it's not a stretch to add him to Bourbons.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 06:52, October 17, 2015 (UTC) :We'd need something tangible, not what's obvious to just one person. Me, I still incline toward Mauras. Turtle Fan (talk) 14:19, October 17, 2015 (UTC) :While it does seem rational and consistent that AF would find a Bourbon, HT never specifies Charles as such. Moreover, it isn't important to the article in and of itself. TR (talk) 14:39, October 17, 2015 (UTC) The Literary comment It's been a long time since we ID'd Charles XI as Maurras. I think we can pretty much pare down the LC to "We don't know who Charles XI was". I'd say do away with it altogether, but people do seem to spend a lot of time debating the issue at AH.com and other such places. TR (talk) 18:42, December 6, 2015 (UTC) :It's probably best to keep it for that reason, as someone coming from those forums might be confused as to why Charles XI isn't considered to be Maurras here.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 19:56, December 6, 2015 (UTC) :I think we do need to keep a Lit. Comm. Remarking on what we used to believe does no harm and presents a touch of humility. ML4E (talk) 21:03, December 6, 2015 (UTC) :I think we need a comment, but I also feel a generic comment will suffice. ID'ing Maurras as probably not being the man does have the effect, I think, of privileging him over other rejected candidates. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:17, December 6, 2015 (UTC) ::Word of God ML4E (talk) 20:52, January 31, 2020 (UTC) :::Well, that puts that issue to bed. TR (talk) 19:19, February 1, 2020 (UTC) ::::And about goddamn time.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 19:30, February 1, 2020 (UTC) :::::We don't need to expand the LC to address this. Maurras' name hasn't been here nearly two years. TR (talk) 20:09, February 1, 2020 (UTC) ::::::I think it worth mentioning in a LC that HT said that Charles XI is not Maurras.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 11:02, February 2, 2020 (UTC) :::::::Provide a reason. TR (talk) 16:00, February 2, 2020 (UTC) ::::::::Or we could stop beating a dead horse. Turtle Fan (talk) 18:06, February 2, 2020 (UTC) :::::::::Someone might come on here and say "But I thought he was Maurras!"Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 19:09, February 2, 2020 (UTC) :::::::Read the foregoing conversation. We removed those references long ago. NO ONE has come in the ensuing years and made such a remark. TR (talk) 20:36, February 2, 2020 (UTC) ::::::::This. Might as well worry that someone's going to go on Jake Featherston's talk page and say "But I thought he was the Hitler of TL-191!" Turtle Fan (talk) 04:06, February 3, 2020 (UTC) ::I did wonder when I poster the link if someone would try to add to the LC. I have to say I'm not surprised. ML4E (talk) 18:59, February 2, 2020 (UTC) :::And did you have a certain "someone" in mind? Turtle Fan (talk) 04:06, February 3, 2020 (UTC) Birth year? I don't see why a 19th-century birth should be presumed. It's possible that Charles XI was born in 1901, making him not much younger than Napoleon at the time of his coup. Should the 19th-century births cat be removed?JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:11, December 11, 2015 (UTC) :Done. TR (talk) 22:35, December 11, 2015 (UTC) Redirect There seems to be a Charles Maurras redirect to this article. That's counter productive.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 17:28, March 13, 2016 (UTC) :It's deleted. Some old link on my old talk page made it look like it was still in place, but it is not. TR (talk) 17:48, March 13, 2016 (UTC)